While we hold varying opinions of Wikileaks' methods and decisions, we all believe that in publishing diplomatic cables Wikileaks is engaging in journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment. Any prosecution of Wikileaks' staff for receiving, possessing or publishing classified materials will set a dangerous precedent for reporters in any publication or medium, potentially chilling investigative journalism and other First Amendment-protected activity.

As a historical matter, government overreaction to publication of leaked material in the press has always been more damaging to American democracy than the leaks themselves.

The U.S. and the First Amendment continue to set a world standard for freedom of the press, encouraging journalists in many nations to take significant risks on behalf of transparency. Prosecution in the Wikileaks case would greatly damage American standing in free-press debates worldwide and would dishearten those journalists looking to this nation for inspiration.

Seems to more or less summarize the position we've taken over the last few weeks as well...

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Good find Dave! American journalistic integrity is pretty bad; in a reasonable country where common sense is upheld, Fox News would have been shut down or warned by the government several times by now... they're one of the biggest source of misinformation out there, but I suppose the First Amendment works both ways!

I'm surprised to see Canada directly below the US, but as with education and social security, the northern European countries are leading the way.

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If hate speech is illegal, then a lot of the stuff that Fox News says or has commentators say should have had people arrested and thrown in prison/jail by now.
We say that hate speech is illegal..... but the prosecutors are way too unwilling to prosecute people for hate speech violations, unless it is against black people.

kyle clements, America is #1. The only short comings we have are those imposed on us by the left. You don't WANT us to be #1. The very idea offends you and others on the left.

Dave, our press can't be free when it has an agenda. Figure that out.

James Carmichael, what you say about Fox I have been saying for years about MSN, CNN, etc. etc. Just because someone doesn't share your point of view doesn't make them wrong. Oh, and Jimmy Carter was a terrible president and is a terrible human being. And I don't need FOX to tell me that.

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Yeah, stupid Jimmy Carter the last president in a hundred years who never started a war and who came close to ending the Israel vs The World conflict. You're right, he is a terrible human being.

I grew up in the US and I live overseas. I also love to travel. When you do that, it's easy to see the shortcomings of the US. Many countries will miss the American Empire but schadenfreude will be thick enough to cut it with a knife.

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I've often reflected that in a mere twenty years we went from a President who could explain in rigorous technical detail how a nuclear submarine works to one who could not pronounce the word "nuclear" properly. (Not to mention from one who came as close as anyone ever has to bringing some semblance of peace to the Middle East to one who started a war there just because he could.)

Any prosecution of Wikileaks' staff for receiving, possessing or publishing classified materials will set a dangerous precedent for reporters in any publication or medium, potentially chilling investigative journalism and other First Amendment-protected activity.

And why exactly would the US government consider this a bad thing? Did anyone stop to think that maybe they want to put a scare into journalists and make them afraid to publish leaked documents?

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Did anyone stop to think that maybe they want to put a scare into journalists and make them afraid to publish leaked documents?

I'm sure you're right about this: the lesser individuals in government -- of which there are many -- are scared to death by Wikileaks et.al. Oh, they hide it with bluster and cries of "treason!" but they're frightened right out of their inferior little minds. They have finally been confronted with the future and they have no idea what to do about it. Which is why we see them flailing helplessly -- Exhibit A, the Air Force futilely trying to firewall out the truth, as if something so pervasive could be kept out indefinitely.

So sure, it's more than plausible that some of this is intentionally calculated for just that purpose.

It won't work.

There are now more mirrors of Wikileaks than ever -- and the next move against them will provoke still more. Similar sites are being set up as fast as their operators can assemble them. Better methods for concealing leakers' identities are being developed. Lessons are being learned from this saga and applied -- subsequent efforts will evolve and be more progressively more resistant to interference. Yes, governments and corporations will try to stop them -- and in some cases, they'll succeed. But they'll never get them all. And each time they succeed all that they'll really accomplish is exerting a little evolutionary pressure on the rest -- which will respond by making themselves that much harder to stop.

The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.

posting

The Fight Over Wikileaks and the Freedom of the Press

In short, it would be unfair to say that the fight over WikiLeaks is free from real and complex ethical, political, and journalist­ic questions. The questions–­at their most basic–that WikiLeaks poses, however, are not entirely new questions. The United States has long defended one’s right to publish, and scoffed at any notion that prior restraint has ever been the answer. Thus, making suggestion­s that WikiLeaks or The New York Times or any publisher should be censored or brought up on criminal charges only casts a dark shadow on a rich tradition of freedom of the press in the United States.
The freedom of the press is even more important when the speech that is on the line is controvers­al in nature. It is at those times that the press needs constituti­onal protection­s the most–not charges of treason. As Justice Black said in AP v. United States, the First Amendment “rests on the assumption that the widest possible disseminat­ion of informatio­n from diverse and antagonist­ic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a condition of a free society.”
Read more: www.lippmannwouldroll.com